


Guilty

by pajamaprodigy



Category: End Roll (Video Game)
Genre: Ableism, Blood and Gore, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Detectives, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Minor Original Character(s), Murder, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Police, Prison, Underage Drug Use, naming unnamed characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2018-12-20 20:58:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11929125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pajamaprodigy/pseuds/pajamaprodigy
Summary: How did a fourteen year old receive the death penalty? By being as blatant as possible about his culpability and lack of remorse. How did his best friend react? Well, that question is a little harder to answer.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm writing this out of frustration with the justice system protrayed in end roll and out of love for Chris.
> 
> Seriously though, how does a 14 year old wind up on death row?

Standing at the top of the steps of the city police station, Russell Seager reached for the door handle, then paused. He looked at the drying blood on his hand and tried to wipe it off on his pants, but there were still places where it was dried dark red and brown in the creases of his palm. Russell wiped it one more time, a bit harder, then pushed the door handle.

The floor was linoleum and black leather couches were arranged in two rectangles on either side of a reception desk. Two women sat on one of the couches, silently looking at the floor. There were booths on two walls from which Russell could hear muffled phone conversations and the clicking of keyboards, and a set of thick metal doors to the left of the desk where a thin young man in a police uniform and a beard sat, staring at a computer. Russell stood in the entrance with his hand on the door, clutching his notebook tightly at his side.

The younger of the two women looked up when the door slammed shut behind Russell then quickly looked away. Russell knew he must have been quite a sight.

The walk to the reception window felt oddly drawn out. _Why aren’t you looking up_ , Russell wanted to shout at the man. _This is important so please look up_.

Still, it wasn’t until he had almost reached the desk that the man asked in a kind and well-rehearsed tone “How can I help you today?”

“I’m reporting a crime,” said Russell. “I just murdered my parents and a cop.”

The man dropped his hands from the computer and stared. Russell wondered if he believed him.

“Thank you for reporting,” he answered, the seriousness of his tone putting Russell’s worries to rest. “Can I ask you your full name, your date of birth, and your home address?”

“Russell Seager. My birthday was on June—“

The door opened beside the desk and two other officers entered the room. “Mr. Seager, please come with us,” said the taller of the two.

The women on the couches were now openly watching. Russell inadvertently made eye contact with the older one, and just as he was wondering how to drop it, he felt warm and rough hands jerk his arms behind his back as someone slid his bloody notebook out of his hand. He tensed inadvertently, which only made the handcuffing more painful. _Foolish, foolish_.

“This is an arrest. As you’re going to be questioned, you have the right to request that your parents or guardians be present. You also have the right to—“

Hadn’t anyone heard him? “My parents are dead. I killed them today, probably about an hour ago.”

“We’re reading you your rights, Mr. Seager,” said one of the two cops behind him. “Everything you say now and during questioning can be used against you in court—“

“I don’t care,” answered Russell. It was true. His rights didn’t matter to him now.

“Are you saying that you do not want to hear your rights?” asked one of the officers.

Russell tried to shrug but it made the handcuffs rub uncomfortably against his arms. He nodded instead and the drying blood pulled at his hair, stinging. Russell felt hands on his arms again and again failed to repress a shiver. The two officers each took one of his arms in theirs and pulled towards the double doors.

“In that case, you don’t have to listen,” said the one on his left, as he pressed a button, opening the doors in front of them. “As a juvenile, you have the right to have a parent or guardian present during questioning…”

Russell tuned him out and stared at the linoleum as they marched him down a fluorescent-lit hallway. The smudges of pink, grey, and brown on the tiles swirled and blended together, and he felt almost weightless, as if he would have tumbled upwards through the ceiling were it not for the cops holding on to him. The feeling wasn’t entirely unfamiliar nor was it unwelcome.

He was led through another set of doors and up to a cinderblock wall where another officer took two photos of him—mugshots, one facing forwards and one from the side, and then into a room where he was given a too-big khaki jumpsuit and told to change because his clothes were evidence—they took off his handcuffs for this part. Still he had to change in front of an officer, who was wearing a suit rather than a uniform, so Russell let himself fall further upwards until he didn’t have to think at all. Later, he didn’t remember anything between unbuttoning his vest and having the handcuffs put back on again after he was changed into a polyester shirt that kept sliding off his shoulders and pants the officer had knotted around the waist to stop them from falling down.

He was then led back into the photo room for more “collecting evidence” which this time meant uncuffing him again, and taking photos of his hands and arms, splotched with dried blood and bruises, which Russell couldn’t make swirl away but which he could avoid looking at, so he just stared down the table instead. The officer in a suit, who called him “Russell” instead of “Mr. Seager” then offered Russell a damp towel to wipe his hands.

“We’re going to take your prints now, and it wouldn’t do for our scanners to be contaminated now, would it?” he said, smiling and showing teeth.

Russell nodded and allowed himself to be led by the two cops from earlier to a machine that looked sort of like the copier in the teachers’ room at his middle school, but bigger. The suited officer -- Detective Kim was his name, as Russell would later learn -- pressed Russell’s hands one by one against a glass pane, and typed on a computer as the machine lit up blue.

Russell could see his reflection in the glass when the light was out. Blood was smeared across his forehead and one cheek and his bangs had clumped together in pieces where the blood had dried. It was his mother’s blood, Russell remembered. He had had to lean in close to his mother’s body as he drove the broken glass into her abdomen, and the blood had spurted up when he wiggled it around inside of her.

“He said there were multiple victims, right?” asked Detective Kim, turning to look at the other cops.

“He said his parents and an officer, so three,” one of them answered.

Detective Kim then turned towards Russell. “You haven’t given us your address or the location of the crime yet.”

Russell said nothing.

“This will be a lot faster if you tell us where this all happened, Mr. Seager.”

“I killed them at home. 4815 Northeast Flavel,” Russell answered flatly. Fast or slow, he didn’t care, but he had resolved to answer their questions when asked. Just let them do whatever they had to now. It was all out of his hands.

“Thank you, Russell,” said Detective Kim, finishing whatever he was typing. “I’ll take another blood sample, then visit the scene. Peyton, call Mansfield so we can have her do the questioning.”

***

Mansfield, it turned out, was another detective. She was older than Detective Kim and she didn’t smile at all, which made her somewhat less intolerable.

They met in a room that looked a lot like Russell’s school guidance counselor’s office, but with a large mirror on the wall instead of a window, and no posters listing good study habits or advertising exam prep courses.

“I’m sorry about the jumpsuit, Mr. Seager,” was the first thing Mansfield said when Russell sat down across the desk from her. “We usually let juveniles keep their clothes, but we don’t want anything to happen to the evidence on yours. Really it’s just a precaution. Now, before we get started, would you like anything to drink? We have orange juice and coffee, and water of course.”

Russell shook his head. He was thirsty, but he had no idea how he was supposed to drink while his hands were cuffed.

“Well, let me know if you want anything. Officer Kelly will uncuff you if you need to drink,” Mansfield said, almost as if she was reading his mind.

Russell resolved not to drink anything. One of the two officers who had brought Russell in sat in a chair by the door, and the other left the room.

“Let’s start from the beginning. You’ve been arrested on suspicion of murdering your parents and a police officer and are currently in police custody. Officers Kelly and de la Torre should have read you your rights; did that happen?” Mansfield folded her hands on the desk.

Russell nodded.

“In that case you know you have the right to request that an attorney or guardian be present while we question you. Do you want to wait for an attorney or for a guardian to be appointed?”

Russell shook his head.

“Please answer out loud, Mr. Seager. I want this to be very clear.”

So they were being recorded. “No, I don’t,” he answered.

Mansfield nodded. “Then I’m going to start by asking you to tell me what you did this afternoon.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome to... the Chris headcanon zone!

_Fuck. Fuck fuck shit_. Chris scrolled hurriedly through his phone notifications, but only one of them was from his twitter. The rest were from his mom. Fourteen missed calls and three texts. _Fuck_.

“What is it Chris?” Jesse asked, craning his neck to look at Chris’s phone. “That guy from Southwood still trying to beef with us?”

“Nah,” Chris got up from the picnic table. He, Jesse, Paul, and Paul’s girlfriend Sasha had all headed up to the dog park after homeroom to smoke even though it was cold as hell for the first week of October. Paul and Sasha were sharing a jacket, being absolutely disgusting, which just pissed Chris off, so he and Jesse had been carving dicks into one of the picnic tables by the park’s gate. The only reason they didn’t just leave the two lovebirds and try to go sell to the catholic school kids was that Sasha’s brother had a car and was supposed to pick them up later so they could all go get burgers. Chris hadn’t had breakfast that morning and weed always made him hungry, so he stuck around. But he hadn’t checked his phone since the four of them left the middle school. “My mom called me.”

“You gonna call her back or what?” Jesse asked.

“Yeah. I’ll be in way deeper shit if I don’t.” Chris shoved his phone into his sweatshirt pocket and walked away. “I’ll let you know if I can stay,” he called back to his friend as he left the park.

The texts were short. “r u in class?” “please answer.” “call me ASAP.” Pretty much what was to be expected when you have fourteen missed calls from your mother.

“Fuck,” Chris muttered, pressing the “call back” button.

The phone rang once, then his mom picked up. “Chris are you at school?”

“Hi mom. Sorry I didn’t answer. We aren’t allowed to look at our phones in class,” said Chris. It wasn’t a lie, exactly. He just hadn’t been in class.

“Have you seen Russell since yesterday?” his mom asked. No hello.

“I haven’t seen him today, no,” said Chris, kicking a pebble. “He came to school yesterday though.” They’d both left at lunch to play games at Chris’s house until about 3, when Russell had said he needed to be home, but his mom didn’t need to know that part.

“I’m guessing you haven’t seen the news then,” said his mom, and Chris felt something in the distance sink hard and fast.

“No?”

Chris could hear his mom take a deep breath on the other end of the line. “Listen. It seems like Russell’s parents were murdered yesterday. They said ‘Dale and Tabitha Seager,’ so I was hoping it was just someone with the same name, but they said that their fourteen-year-old son was arrested. Really I’m just making sure at this point I guess…” Her voice trailed off.

“Wait, they’re dead? Like, actually dead? Russell was arrested? Why?” Chris asked, even though part of him already knew.

“Well, if it’s Russell, they think he might have, well, been responsible,” said Chris’s mom. “It must be awful for him if he’s innocent…” She trailed off again.

 _Of course he killed them, thought Chris. Good_. Chris could picture just how it must have been, Russell coming home to a drunk and belligerent father and an apathetic mother and finally snapping and fighting back until they were both dead and he was safe. And the police would realize it was in self defense and let Russell go and then—

“Hey mom, remember when we talked about Russell moving in with us?” asked Chris.

“Of course I do. You invited him and he said no.”

Chris continued. “Yeah, but that was a while ago. Maybe after he’s released he’ll change his mind.”

“Chris, do you understand what I told you or not?” asked his mom. She sounded more tired than angry.

“I mean, if Russell killed his parents, they’ll have to let him go, right?” Chris said. “It was probably self defense or something.”

The other end of the line was silent for a while before his mother finally answered. “We just don’t know. They only died yesterday, Chris.”

“Right,” said Chris. _But it was obvious_ , he thought. All they’d have to do was see that Russell’s parents were assholes and he’d be ok.

“How much longer is your lunch break?” asked Chris’s mom.

“Like five minutes,” Chris answered. Lying on the phone was easier than lying in person, but it still made him nervous.

“Can I ask you to come home after school tonight? I should be back around seven, so we can have dinner together. I want to talk to you.”

“About, you know, the situation?”

“Yeah. I think this is something we need to talk about,” answered his mother.

“Ok, mom. I’ll come right home after school.” After getting burgers with Sasha, Paul, and Jesse, Chris thought to himself. Lying to my mom while stoned, I really am a bad kid.

 _Still a better kid than Russell_ , something inside of Chris remarked, and Chris gritted his teeth. Shut up. There was no way Russell was at fault. True it was awful now but in the end they’d have to realize. Chris shoved his phone deep into his pocket.

Behind him, Chris heard the sound of running feet and spun to see Jesse skid to a stop. Looking back up behind him, he saw Sasha waving by an unfamiliar car.

“You in trouble?” Jesse asked.

“Nah,” said Chris, deciding not to bother him with what had happened.

Jesse clapped Chris on the back. “Good, because Danny—that’s Sasha’s brother—said he’d leave without us if you held us up any longer. So let’s get going!”

Chris jogged with Jesse back up towards the entrance to the park with Jesse, and squished into the back of Danny’s car, pressed up between Paul’s body and the car door.

* * *

 

Later, Chris would wonder why he was so sure everything would be ok, why he believed in the cops and in Russell. He liked to think it was because he had been smoking. For whatever reason, the enormity of what had happened would not hit him until almost a year later.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I haven't been updating more regularly; senior year of college is kicking my ass lmao
> 
> i also really want to thank my friend Allison, who studied criminal justice, for all her help fielding the questions that are too specific for google.

It was almost ten in the evening when a group of officers in suits knocked on the door.

One walked over to detective Mansfield and spoke to her quietly, while another approached Russell. “Looks like your questioning is over for the night. It’ll continue tomorrow once the court order is in, but for now, we’re gonna head over to the detention center, alright?”

Russell nodded. His head felt like it was full of cotton.

“Come on, Russell,” said officer Kelly, heaving himself up from the folding chair when he had been sitting. Russell stood up, and officer Kelly and two of the suited officers walked him out the door. One foot in front of the other, that was the only way to keep going.

“You must have had a long day, huh kid?” asked one of the officers casually.

Russell didn’t answer.

The officers led him back down the hallway until they came to a set of concrete stairs and began to descend. He was tired but he didn’t think he would sleep for a long time.

“Keeping quiet; that’s pretty smart.” The officer chuckled. “You must be in some damn hot water to have Mansfield and Kim on your case.”

They arrived at a light blue metal door, beyond which Russell could see a brightly lit hallway. There was a plaque beside the door, but Russell could only make out the first few letters before one of the officers opened the door.

A bored-looking, freckled officer met them on the other side. Perched on a tall stool behind a plastic desk, wearing round glasses and a lighter grey uniform than the other officers, she reminded Russell somewhat of an owl. “Search papers?”

“Here you go.” One of the officers hands over an envelope. Further down the hall, beyond the desk, a group of officers led an elderly man through a metal door. A few moments later they reappeared and walked quickly back down the hall to the far door where they had come in.

The owl-ish officer read quickly. A few pages in, she inhaled sharply. “Jesus…” She wrote something on her computer, stuffed the envelope in her pocket. then slipped off her stool and grabbed the chain of Russell’s handcuffs. “I’ll take it from here, guys.”

“Alright.” The other officers left. One turned to wave at Russell, but the only sounds they made were their boots on the floor and the slamming of the door behind them.

The freckled officer waited for them to leave, then pushed sharply against Russell’s back, leading him down the hall. “Lucky for you they ordered a solitary room. I’d love to throw you in with some of the regulars. I’d tell them all about you, bet they’d do the government’s job a lot faster.”

If his hands weren’t cuffed, if he weren’t so tired from stabbing and bludgeoning and talking, Russell would have wanted to kill her. _Or to try at least. She probably has some kind of self defense training_ , thought Russell. Another thought immediately forced its ugly way in: _so what? Yumi did too, and look how easy it was for your stupid, drunk dad_. Russell tried to summon the floating feeling, but it wouldn’t come. Instead they continued to push along, his feet heavy on the concrete floor.

They turned down another hallway similar to the first, but with more doors. The doors here were different, Russell noticed. Only the bottom half was solid metal, and the top half was simply comprised of six painted metal bars stretching across open space.

Russell didn’t bother looking inside any of the cells; he’d see the interior soon enough.

At a door marked with a white stenciled number “15,” the officer pulled a key off her belt with her free hand. “Here’s your nice safe solitary cell, crazy bastard.” She walked Russell inside, shut the door, then finally let go of the handcuffs to pull something out of her pocket.

All the exhaustion that had been building up inside of Russell finally won out. His legs felt weak, shaky, and a cold sweat had broken out on the back of his neck. _I need to lie down_ , Russell thought. _Lie down, rest, or else I'll fall. Somewhere to rest..._

“Get your psycho ass back over here,” she yelled, as Russell dropped to one of the concrete benches along the walls. “I’m supposed to uncuff you, but I’m just going to leave if you don’t get up and get back over here before I count to ten. One. Two…”

Russell stayed seated, his hands behind his back. What was even the point? 

“…ten! And I’m out.” The officer turned quickly and left, as if she were walking away from something wet and stinking.

Russell sighed and lay down on the bench. Flourescent lights covered the ceiling of the windowless cell. Three of the four walls were solid concrete, with low benches along their bottoms. In the corner opposite Russell was a toilet. _A homey touch_ , he thought to himself. He wished it would disappear or the lights would go out. Instead, he rolled over to face the cell wall.

There was no way to keep time in that cell. There was no window, and the room stayed lit. Sometimes footsteps passed his door, but there was no pattern to the coming and going of officers and arrestees. When a new officer came to Russell's door, he had no idea how long he had slept. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "crazy bastard" was one of the other translations that vgperson gave for "ikare yarou [sama]", which was translated in the game as "deranged maniac"!


	4. Chapter 4

Chris didn’t go to school the next day. That wasn’t too unusual. Chris had sometimes just avoided school entirely, getting on the bus in front of his mom, then getting off just one stop away and spending the rest of the day wandering around the town with friends or at home playing video games with Russell. That usually ended with getting marked absent from homeroom, so he couldn’t do it that often, but he did it anyway. It wasn’t until you’d been marked absent three times in a month that a call home was made anyway, which meant he could technically skip homeroom eight times per semester if he spaced his absences right. That day, however, Chris’s mom knew he was missing school. Chris had stayed up until two in the morning reading local news articles, trying to glean whatever he could, until his mom told him to shut off his phone so she could get some sleep. Then Chris lay awake, going over in his mind what he knew. Russell’s parents and a cop were dead. Their son had confessed. Nobody said his name because he was a minor, but Chris knew it was Russell. He was “in police custody,” whatever the hell that meant. Chris knew "custody" was when someone was legally someone else's guardian, but there was no way the police were just in charge of Russell's life from now on, the way a parent would be, right?

When Chris woke up at half past noon, his mom was still home, drinking a cup of coffee at the kitchen counter in her running clothes.

“I called the school to tell them you weren’t feeling well,” she said by way of greeting. “I didn’t want to make you go to school on so little sleep, but I do expect you to get some homework done by the time I’m back from work.”

Homework. Crap. Chris hadn’t checked any of his class websites in well over a month. He wasn’t sure if there even was one for algebra. Besides, he’d already wasted so much data last night.

“I was actually thinking of calling the police.” Chris changed the subject. “Just to like, ask about...” He wanted to say “When Russell can come here to live with us,” but he knew from their conversation last night that she would refuse to talk about it.

Chris’s mom put down her coffee mug. “If you’re going to do that, you should probably try the county jail instead. He might not be in their database yet though, so I’d give it another day.” “I just can’t stop thinking about it,” Chris said.

“I know,” said his mom. She reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “We just don’t know anything yet. All we can do now is hope you were right about self defense.”

Chris nodded, then turned to open the cabinet to see if there was any bread left. He wasn’t sure if he really was hungry but he knew he needed to eat.

* * *

 

After his mother reminded Chris of the location of the list of numbers to call if she wasn’t back by morning, she left the apartment. There wasn’t any bread, but there was a package of oatmeal cookies, so Chris took a few, settled himself on the couch, and yet again searched up the murder case. The local news article had been updated; it had exactly the same information as yesterday, but this time with a picture of what Chris assumed was Russell’s house, police tape draped around it. Chris had never been there so he couldn’t say for sure.

Chris stared at the picture for some time. The house in it was single story and a weird pinkish gray color. There was a dying plant of some kind next to the door and a chainlink fence around the yard, short enough to hop over. The blinds were drawn over the windows, which somehow surprised Chris. During the day, he and his mom left theirs open. There hadn’t been much of a reason for him to go there; Russell never wanted to go and from the stories he told, Chris didn’t much want to either. Looking at the picture on his phone, it occurred to Chris that he probably would never know now. Even if Russell got out of jail tonight, even if Chris, for whatever reason, snuck into a crime scene, it wouldn’t be Russell’s house anymore. He wouldn’t ever see the house that Russell saw when the police led him home at night or the rooms where Russell did...whatever he had done the previous night.

Chris felt suddenly self conscious, even though he was alone with his thoughts. _Freak, you can’t do anything about it so stop thinking so much_. Damn he wished the tv still worked. Or that he had another cookie. Or anything to distract himself really.

Chris quickly closed the browser window and pulled up his messages. Maybe he just needed to be with people.

Maybe then he wouldn’t feel so achingly lonely.

* * *

 

So ended Chris’s first of many meditations on the problem of whether two people can ever really understand each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for not updating for months lmao my computer had issues and i lost the original document, then college was just kicking my ass. i haven't graduated yet so updates will probably be kind of sporadic, but i haven't lost interest yet!


End file.
